A few more delicious tidbits have landed in my inbox overnight, after yesterday’s post, so before proceedings kick off this morning, I thought I’d work through a few.

Firstly, donations. Reforms that went through the NSW State Parliament earlier this year have caused considerable angst within the NSW Greens. The State party has been a long-standing advocate for donation reform, with now Senator Lee Rhiannon’s office coordinating Democracy4sale. Differences between NSW and the Australian Greens came to a head over the authorship of an article in Crikey.

Within NSW too, there were differences on the best way to respond to O’Farrell’s donation reform; but in the end, splits were papered over in public and the NSW Greens voted to support them. However, this stance was heavily criticised by the union movement.

So, it’s interesting now that a workshop will be held this weekend to discuss, among other things, a policy that will:

“Recognising the important role of membership-based not-for-profit organisations and collective political action in a democracy, and removing some of the restrictions on their engagement in the electoral process.”

Will be interesting to watch – keep the information coming!

Another morsel has been the proposal to change the definition of which NSW Greens members are defined as metro, and who is not. This matters as committees and preselections have a weighting to ensure broad representation of members. Ensuring diversity is a broad Greens aim, but the mechanics of how to do this are always hotly debated.

Lastly, I’ve had now from several sources that one of the hottest election battles looks to be over the Membership Officer position. Given the key nature of this voluntary role (and the eye-popping revelations in the report on the Senate preselection), it’s no surprise that this is a contest with teeth. Phone calls were going out until late last night to delegates about this election particularly. Members would be right to be wondering what this is all really about.